The Time Traveler's Wife is one of the more interesting fiction novels to come out in recent years. Its about Henry DeTamble, an adventurous librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap.

I figured it was a good time to talk to the author, Audrey Niffenegger, because the book is now picking up steam in Hollywood since Gus Van Sant is in negotiations to direct the film adaptation.

Daniel Robert Epstein: The Time Traveler's Wife has such a unique premise, so what came first, the concept or the characters?

Audrey Niffenegger: The title came first. I was sitting at my drawing table and I have a sheet of paper that I jot things down on. That title was one of the random jottings.

DRE: Was it something you found later or did you think it was good right after you wrote it?

AN: After I wrote it I sort of got intrigued right away because you have two married characters and you know the husband is a time traveler. I started to think about who these people might be and it moved from there.

DRE: Was time travel or science fiction always something you were interested in?

AN: Ive been reading science fiction sort of casually since I was young but I was never a science fiction fanatic. Ive always liked [Time and Time Again author] Jack Finney so I had a casual interest in it.

DRE: Some critics compared your book to Slaughterhouse Five.

AN: Thats a fabulous book I read when I was 15 then I read it again when people started mentioning it with my book. Its one of the great pieces of anti-war literature but I dont think my book is like it at all. I was very pleased to discover when I reread it that I stumbled onto the same concept that that [Kurt] Vonnegut used, which is the block universe you can move around in.

DRE: How difficult was it to develop the concept you used?

AN: It wasnt hard at all. Its like doing puzzles; you start somewhere and fit things together. It was very enjoyable because I like to move things around and fit them together. I like to take something illogical and make it pseudo logical.

DRE: Did you use a writing program?

AN: No I just had a couple of different timelines in my computer. Very simple documents saying who was when, what they knew and who they ran into.

DRE: Was there any point where things were clashing and you needed to go back and figure out what was going on?

AN: When it was being edited, changes were being made that had to be retrofitted. It had to do with the series of miscarriages in the middle of the book. Also at one point I changed Henrys birthday which screwed some things up. But it all worked out.

DRE: Was it fun to create such a challenging thing?

AN: That was part of the appeal. Whenever you are engaged in a long piece of writing the fun of it is to create a whole consistent world that somebody could sink into. I think if you do it with enough confidence people could just pop into your world and just splash around.

DRE: How much scientific research did you do?

AN: A lot more than I used. I just went to the library and found a book for writers who want to write science fiction called Time Travel for Writers or something. It was an overview of all the possible permutations and clues on how to fudge these things for your fictional universe. Due to my research while I was writing the book I could have had an intelligent conversation about genetics and certain philosophical things but now its all fallen out.

DRE: As you said The Time Traveler's Wife deals with miscarriages quite a bit. Have you had personal experience with that?

AN: I havent. I did all my research by talking to people that I know have had that happen to them. I feel that in a certain way that people think I have had personal experience with that. I get a lot of fan email from people telling me about their personal experiences.

DRE: Does it make you feel guilty at all?

AN: I do a little and it makes me feel like Im masquerading a bit. Its easy to conflate authors with their characters. The research I did on that subject was amazing because people wanted to share stories about their pregnancies.

DRE: Did you know what was going to happen at the end of the book?

AN: Yes because I wrote the ending first.

DRE: How close to the real ending was what you wrote?

AN: Exactly. The last two scenes in the book I wrote first and changed them hardly at all. The thing thats hard to explain is that I had been doing these visual novels and you can pick the pictures up and rearrange them until you are happy. I kind of wrote like that. All these short scenes dont appear in the order they were in. At various points I reshuffled things, which works thematically for the book.

DRE: What artform does Clare do in the novel?

AN: What she is essentially doing is large scale sculpture which is something I have no talent for. I do teach at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts and to people outside that artform they might think that all things paper and book are one thing. But to one dog another dog is totally different so to me a papermaker is totally different from a printer which is what I am. A lot of people came to the conclusion that Clare is a self portrait for me but she is actually very different.

DRE: How would you describe yourself then?

AN: Clare is very patient, passive and very nice. Im neither patient nor passive. Im more like Henry than Clare.

DRE: I read you gave your boyfriend the book just a few days into your relationship.

AN: He read it fairly early and I was just holding my breath and he was also because when you are dating someone who does something creative and you dont like what they do its doomed.

DRE: Especially since he is an artist himself.

AN: He is a marvelous musician who I respect so much so thank god he liked it.

AN: I do. I was reading it on a plane and the guy next to me kept looking over and I kept wondering what he was thinking but I didnt really want to find out. The new thing I am working on is kind of about cemeteries so I was reading it a bit for research but mostly because it looked cool.

DRE: There are quite a few references to punk rock in your book, were you ever into that?

AN: I was one of those very quiet punks. I stayed in my room, played records and was never a big club kid. If you understand that punk isnt about safety pins through the nose and more about an attitude and independence then I would say I still am.

I kept kind of glancing surreptitiously at the book as I shelved, because it looked potentially interesting but it had been put in general fiction, which is usually not my thing. And then I decided to heck with it, and grabbed it, and read it. And it absolutely blew me away. So utterly romantic, such wonderful play with the time travel concept...I recommend it to anyone. Absolutely anyone.

Well, except maybe the people who'll only read Christian fiction. But they don't know what they're missing.

This is my favorite book ever. I reccomend it to everyone I talk to. I cried in the end, I was touched, I couldn't put it down, and I've read it three times since.
Now that the movie is coming out..I know everyone will be interested, but I can tell it won't be the same as the emotions I get when reading the book. It is absolutely amazing.